Love And Secrets
by Julia451
Summary: One-shot set during Catching Fire. During the wedding dress photo shoot, Katniss Everdeen and her maid of honor Madge Undersee chat about the difficulties of love.


"Ah, there she is!" I hear Effie say jubilantly downstairs. "There's our maid of honor!" At the words, I finally decide to stop hiding upstairs and go down. Madge and I embrace as soon as she walks through the door. She's one of the few people who knows how hard this is for me and whose real support I know I can count on. We hold each other until Effie's barking at her to get her coat off, we have dresses to get on and photos to take.

Madge handles the badgering from Effie and the prep team better than I do, smiling sweetly all the way through, asking all the right questions and making all the right comments. It must come with being the mayor's daughter. She gushes over the six beautiful bridesmaid dresses Cinna has designed for her (a different one to go with each of my own six potential wedding gowns) and wishes she could wear them all. While the prep team are trying to console her, she sneaks a wink at me. I wink back, thanking her for dealing with it all so well. I wonder if things are any easier on Peeta and his brother/best man across the street. The photo shoot hasn't even begun, and I'm already sick of it.

Effie shows us which set we'll be trying on first. The prep team are about to carry the gowns upstairs to the dressing room (otherwise known as my bedroom) when Madge stops them. "Uh-uh-uh," she says with a giggle. "That's my job this time, remember? If I'm going to be preparing our bride on Wedding Day, I need to practice." Without waiting for a response, she gestures for me to follow her upstairs. I do so without hesitation, so calmly and surely that no one would question that this is appropriate. The prep team stare after her jealously until I promise to give them full responsibility over all hair, make-up, and accessories.

Closing my bedroom door on the cameras feels like being released from prison. At least I'll have six breaks today when Madge helps me put on each of my dresses to talk freely. As I start undressing, I try to calculate how much time we'll have, how long the bride and maid of honor can stretch out putting on these elaborate contraptions the Capitol calls clothes without arousing suspicion.

"How are you holding up?" Madge asks as she undresses across the room.

"If I don't survive this, I want you to have half my wedding dresses, and Prim the other half," I answer.

"Only half?" she asks melodramatically.

I grin in spite of myself. "All six if you can get me out of this."

"I don't know about that, but I'll do my best to get you through it." Madge brings over the first dress and begins helping me into it. The thought of wearing it while getting married to Peeta makes me tremble with dread. I never got out of the arena after all. I'm still a prisoner, and I'll be a prisoner for the rest of my life. Peeta's a good person, but he's just another prisoner who will be better company than most other men – the thought of sharing my sentence with him doesn't comfort me, especially when I think that it will probably hurt him more than me.

Madge takes my shoulders in her hands. "It'll all be over in a few hours, Katniss," she tells me, obviously thinking I'm still just daunted by the demands of the photo shoot.

I shake my head as she gets back to work on the dress. "It's not that, it's Peeta. How am I supposed to go through with this?"

Madge continues with her task as we talk. "I'm sorry they're doing this to you, Katniss, but... I would rather see you married than dead in that arena."

"Thanks," I tell my friend. I understand what she means. I force myself to imagine how I would feel if it had been Madge going into the arena on a star-crossed lovers ticket and coming out engaged. I would certainly prefer having her engaged but alive. Of course, she doesn't know that my death has already been guaranteed anyway, but even if this wedding would save everyone like I originally thought, I know I still wouldn't enjoy it. "Actually, it seems more unfair what they're doing to Peeta."

"You still don't know how badly he wants to marry you, do you, Katniss?"

"Not like this," I say. "They're forcing him to marry a girl who can't love him the way he wants."

"Done." We go over to the bed, and I help Madge into her bridesmaid dress. It's much simpler and more manageable than mine. How I envy it! Madge resumes our real conversation seamlessly. "You know my theory about the Star-Crossed Lovers From District 12."

"Right," I sigh, but not enraged like the day when she first told me. "How I really am in love with Peeta but just can't let my defenses down enough to admit it. What makes you such an expert on that anyway?"

We're both ready now and have no choice but to head downstairs and face the firing squad of cameras. We continue our conversation in installments throughout the day, picking up where we left off each time we go to my bedroom to change.

"Because that's how we all feel," Madge answers later after we're finished with the first set of dresses. "We know that making friends or lovers can only hurt us. None of us want to risk caring about anybody. That way, you only have to worry about yourself on reaping day. As long as your name's not called, you're fine. All you have to do is not care about anyone else. Don't let anyone mean anything to you. It's hard to shake the habit."

"Even if that's true, even in I could convince myself that it's safe to love someone," I ask, "what makes you so sure Peeta would be the one I chose?"

"The way you look at him," Madge explains. "The way you risked your life to get him that medicine for his leg. The way you two kissed in the cave. The way he keeps your nightmares away."

I can't explain that last one, but as to the rest of her list, I say, "That was all an act. It was the only way to save us."

"Isn't one of your biggest problems that you can't lie or act?" I have no response for that, either. "Maybe I could believe that was all an act if someone else did it, I don't know, but there's no way I can believe _you_ could pull off an act that good. No offense."

"Offense taken," I say sarcastically, trying to forget all the times Peeta and Haymitch and Effie have lamented my terrible acting. It's true I'm no good with doing anything phony; if I were, I wouldn't have failed in my mission to delude the nation into a sense of contentment. How did I ever manage to convince the sponsors I was madly in love with Peeta? "You'd be surprised what you're capable of when your life is on the line," I conclude.

"No, only what people are capable of when a loved one's life is on the line."

"I owed him," I try next. "Peeta saved my life one day by giving me bread when I was starving to death. I never spoke to him for five years after that. I never got a chance to repay him."

"I had no idea," Madge says awkwardly.

"It happened before we met. I was only eleven."

"Is that when you fell in love with him?" Madge asks, completely sincerely.

"No!" I snap. "I never pictured myself marrying Peeta Mellark! I _never_ wanted to marry Peeta Mellark!"

"You just never wanted to marry."

I can't deny that, but I can argue, "Same thing. I still don't want to marry Peeta or anyone else. How am I supposed to go on pretending I'm in love with him for the rest of my life?"

"If you really _do_ have to fake it, you'll be doomed," Madge concludes, not without good cause.

"My point exactly," I agree. "Any advice, love expert?"

"Love him," she answers laconically. "Other than that, no. Having to pretend you're in love with someone is new to me. Usually, the problem is having to hide you _are_ in love with someone when you shouldn't be."

"At least I don't have _that_ problem to complicate things," I say in a forced voice, shoving an image of Gale out of my thoughts.

Madge sighs before she says, "Well, people have been doing that for centuries, and they've survived. Just think of it as like that, only reversed."

I try, but that only makes me confused. "I can't," I confess. "I don't even get it. Why would you hide you were in love with someone unless you were already married? How much damage can feelings do? Even if the Capitol forbade it or something, as long as you didn't sleep with them or marry them, why would it matter if anyone knew how you felt?"

"Maybe the other person doesn't feel the same way," Madge says slowly.

"If that doesn't change how you feel, though, what good is it keeping it a secret? If you know you're going to be rejected anyway, confessing it can't hurt anything," I suggest.

"Maybe it could," says Madge, so softly I can barely hear her until I get closer. "Maybe... he's a friend who's in love with someone else, and he likes you just fine as a friend, but if he knew you felt something different, he would get angry, and you'd lose his friendship entirely. It's better to keep things the way they are than lose him completely."

I shake my head incredulously at that theory. "He would figure it out."

"Not if he wasn't looking for it."

"If he did, he'd be angrier at her for lying to him than he would have been if she'd told him the truth," I argue.

"Well, that answers your question why it's so important to hide love sometimes," Madge say with a shrug.

"It wouldn't be worth it," I say. "Better to let him know and be done with it than go on in an agonizing friendship that never satisfies. It would be like tantalizing a starving person with images of a feast they couldn't eat."

"If you're hungry and someone offers you a modest meal, it's better to eat it than reject it just because it's not a feast," is Madge's clever response.

I think for a minute before I say, "I guess it _is_ easier to be forced to eat a feast you don't want than to be forced to go hungry."

To my surprise, Madge instantly shakes her head. "No, it's always painful to live a lie. But if it's either that or lose what you love, you do it, no matter how hard it is."

Something about the way she says it makes me ask, suspicious for the first time, "Have you ever had to live a lie, Madge?"

She snaps her head around towards me and says, "No, of course not."

I raise my eyebrow. "Are you lying?"

She sighs and asks in a defeated tone, "If I were, do you think I could tell you?"

Stunned, I ask, "Madge, who have we been talking about?" I remember her switch to the pronoun "he."

"Why does it matter?" she asks.

"Because... I had no idea," I reply.

"That's the point of a secret."

We've finished putting on the last set of dresses, but I have a feeling that if we break to go downstairs now, she won't pick it up again. I stand in front of the door and ask, "Why do you need a secret?"

"I've told you why," she says weakly.

I should ask next who "he" is and why it has to be a secret, why she has to pretend for him the way I have to pretend about Peeta but in reverse. I should, but a memory paralyzes my tongue. It's the memory of a snow-covered figure on my doorstep, risking her own safety to get medicine to a boy who desperately needed it, of Haymitch joking about how much she must love strawberries. I don't want to know any more.

Madge's expression changes slightly. I realize, no matter how much I try to deny it, that I know her secret, that she knows I know her secret, but if she doesn't say it aloud, it's as good as if I don't know, just as my romance with Peeta is as good as real for the Capitol as long as nobody says the secret truth out loud.

"I hate secrets," I say bitterly.

"I don't," says Madge. "I couldn't survive without it."

In spite of my bitterness, I end up asking gently, "It means that much to you?" The look in her eyes is my answer. I start to say, "I'm so-"

"Don't," she says quickly but calmly, so I don't. There's no trace of pain in her voice, however, when she says, "It's easier than being forced to marry someone you have to pretend to love."

"I thought I wasn't pretending?" I ask.

"If you believe you are, it's the same thing," she explains.

All I believe for sure at this moment is that she's wrong. "No – whatever it is, it's easier than having to hide that you're in love with someone."

"What makes you so sure?" she asks challengingly.

I echo her words from earlier: "The way you look at him. The way you risked yourself to get him that medicine..."

"Shh!" She steps forward and puts her finger over my lips. "It's all right. Don't worry about me."

I believe her – that she's okay with it. I wish I knew how she bears it. I wish she didn't have to. I wish secrets hadn't poisoned the love in our lives so much.

By now, Effie's banging on the door asking where we are, frantic about the five minutes we've lost. Time to bury our secrets again and go out to face the world – one of us pretending a love she doesn't feel for the boy she has to have, the other concealing the love she feels for the boy she can't have.

That's love in Panem for you.


End file.
